The Link of Nature
by Seance Xenobia
Summary: The times, troubles, and trials of the students of Our Lady of Endor Satanic Academy: An Addams High School AU. Rated for future abominations.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes: I'm not really sure where this came from. It's something of a hodge-podge of comic, show, and movie canons, but is ultimately an original retelling (if there can be such a thing) of the first meeting, courtship, and engagement of Gomez and Morticia Addams. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it up until the end..._

_Oh, yes, and the title is compliments of Milton._

* * *

><p>The sound of clashing steel emanated from the gymnasium of Our Lady of Endor Satanic Academy in Westfield, New Jersey. On any other night, the din might have proclaimed some life-or-death conflict, or else a very raucous conviviality; as it was Tuesday, it meant fencing practice.<p>

"New girl?" Gomez queried, rolling his wrist to easily parry Balthazar's attacking thrust.

"Ophelia's cousin," Gomez's own cousin replied, scuttling down the strip as Gomez advanced upon him. "She didn't tell you?"

Behind his mask, Gomez frowned. "It must have slipped her mind."

"I can't imagine how. Even from the back, the girl looked worth mentioning. Legs long enough to wrap around you twice."

"Addamses!" bellowed their coach. "Save the hen party for the locker room! Balthazar, you're slouching again! Clean lines, people, clean lines!"

Balthazar straightened, with barely enough time to parry Gomez's lunge. Their coach barked an approval and moved on to the next pair of fighters. "Riposte, Alford, riposte!"

* * *

><p>"What year is she in?" Gomez asked over the sound of multiple shower sprays as he soaped up in one of the locker room shower stalls after practice.<p>

"Who?" Balthazar called from the next stall over.

"Ophelia's cousin!"

"I don't know! Ask your girlfriend!"

* * *

><p>"Why should I," Gomez asked, plucking at the front of his red and gray school scarf so that it sat just so above the breast of his black wool coat, "when the two of you have apparently been such bosom buddies of late?"<p>

Balthazar's smirk looked entirely too mischievous on his boyish face as he laced up his wingtips. "Do I detect a note of jealousy in the perfume of your words, dear cousin?"

"Hardly. Merely a lack of surprise."

"If you're that jaded to her transgressions, why do you keep forgiving her?"

Gomez's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He had not yet told Balthazar that the price his parents had named for his role in the ugly business with Fester and the Amore twins had been that of his own romantic fate. If women had come between brothers, then there would be no more women, plural; for Gomez, there was to be only one, and she was to be of his parents' choosing.

_She_ was Ophelia Frump.

Truth be told, the very idea of marrying Ophelia more than galled him - it terrified him. She was flighty, fickle. Insane, yes, but even her madness was misplaced. More than delusional, she was deluded, her psychosis sloppy and slapdash; in short, himself, squared. He was no brooding Hamlet, and he feared that she might make him so out of sheer compensation almost as much as he feared that she wouldn't. They were two of a kind, twin lunatics with no stabilizing Earth to keep either from transcending their equally tenuous orbits. In time, Gomez knew, they would either collide to their mutual anihilation, or scatter into distant, different stars. It would be a marriage made in heaven, all right - one with each of them occupying separate galaxies. They wouldn't even get to share the joy of making each other miserable.

_C'est la vie,_ he thought with a sigh, and pushed his gloved hands into his coat pockets as he and Balthazar left the locker room and crossed the courtyard that stood between the gymnasium and the boys' dormitories. New snow creaked beneath their shoes as they walked. Gomez lit a kretek and offered one to Balthazar, who habitually refused.

"Has Aunt Eudora said whether or not your family will be hosting their annual Hexmas party this year?" Balthazar asked.

Gomez cocked an incredulous eyebrow. "_My_ mother, let a little estrangement and figurative fratricide keep her from societal triumph? Surely you jest."

Balthazar smiled. "Touché. I'm glad to hear she's getting along all right."

The words "without Fester" hung unspoken in the air. Gomez vanquished them with a plume of clove-scented smoke, guilt twisting his stomach.

"She's a strong woman," he said. "It would take a mob to bring her down. Which she would probably enjoy," he admitted with a shrug. "She's always happiest in a crowd."

"Ah, the proud Repelli matrilineal tradition of histrionic personality disorder."

"Mm. It's a pity Fester and I never had a sister. I know Mother still laments my being a boy."

Balthazar shrugged. "She did her best."

"Yes, but training only goes so far. I simply haven't the talent."

"Pish-tosh. You're a marvellous ham."

"You really think so?"

"On your better days, you make Don Quixote look positively practical."

Gomez smiled and inclined his head in humility. "You're too kind."

"Yes. My father thinks so, too," Balthazar sighed. " 'You're nearly eighteen, Balthazar, and you haven't even been tried for assault, let alone manslaughter!' "

"Patience," Gomez consoled him. "Good things come to those who wait. And then you eat them."

"That's easy for you to say. You ripped your nanny's throat out at six."

Gomez shrugged. "She said I looked like a little vampire; I was only playing along."

"Even so. Do you know what I would have done? Filled a box with earth and gone to sleep in it."

Gomez frowned as they reached the dormitory. "What's so strange about that?"

They passed the common room, exchanged brief greetings with the boys inside, were invited by their other cousin Itt to play cards, and agreed to join the next game after they dropped off their gear in their room.

"Well, nothing, on the whole," Balthazar went on as they ascended the stairs. "What I mean to say is, that would have been the first thing I thought to do. I wouldn't have gone for her jugular because it simply wouldn't have occurred to me. I'm not benevolent, thank Lucifer, but sometimes I wonder if being benign isn't almost _worse._"

"Nonsense. A tumor needn't be malignant to leech the life out of a person. Your wickedness isn't substandard; it's _subtle._ A spider which does not bite may still lay its eggs in someone's ear."

Balthazar looked unconvinced. "If that's the case, they're certainly taking their time hatching."

Gomez laughed and clapped his cousin encouragingly on the shoulder, but his grin was quick to wilt with Balthazar's next question: "Speaking of spiders, will you be interrogating your white widow tonight about her suspiciously inconstant tongue?"

"If I ask her anything in regard to her tongue, it certainly won't be that she use it to speak."

"So crude, cousin."

Gomez's eyebrows ascended his forehead. "Mister Legs-long-enough-to-wrap-around-you-twice thinks _me_ crude?"

"Well, they were. Are. Or, with a bit of luck, will be."

"Bravado. You're too sweet to sweet-talk anyone."

Balthazar shrugged. "Maybe I won't have to. Maybe I'll mean it."

"The trick, old man, is to _always_ mean it."

Balthazar scoffed and rolled his eyes. "You can't tell me you've genuinely loved _every_ woman you've wooed."

"Loved? No. Desired, longed for, treasured, yes. If only for an hour at a time. Tell them everything except eternity, and you'll never be caught in a lie."

"And what will you say on your wedding day, if not 'till death do us part?' "

Gomez forced a hearty laugh up past his lead-lined heart. " 'Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.' "

* * *

><p>Margaret Womack looked up from her Romantics homework when suddenly there came a rapping, as of someone gently tapping, tapping at her chamber door.<p>

She glanced warily between it and the volume of Poe on her desk.

"Come in?"

In lieu of a raven, Sister Lilith Aleister Crowley entered the dormitory, followed by an unfamiliar girl. She was about Margaret's age, but therein did their similarities end. Margaret was of average height, with shoulder-length red hair and pointed features that placed her in an ambiguous part of the spectrum between plain and pretty; this girl was tall, with a long, thick black braid that tapered, whiplike, at its end, and the sort of aristocratic beauty usually reserved for the limestone busts of Great Royal Wives found in Pharoanic tombs.

Margaret disliked her immediately.

"Morticia," said Sister Crowley, addressing the new arrival, "this is Margaret Womack. Margaret, this is your new roommate, Morticia Frump."

Startled, Margaret noticed for the first time that one of the girl's pale, long-fingered hands was wrapped around the iron handle of a piece of luggage that looked like an old steamer trunk modified to be wheeled around like a modern suitcase - and her name alarmed Margaret just as much as her apparent intent to stay.

"Frump? As in, Ophelia Frump?"

"My cousin." The new girl's voice was low but clear, and a small, almost apologetic smile curved her too-red lips.

_Oh, no..._

"Margaret will show you to your classes and acquaint you with the layout of the school and our general customs. You'll have to see Sister Lovecraft in the library for your textbooks. Lights out is sun-up, no boys in the girls' dorms and vice-versa. The faculty will not play spectator to your transgressions, but neither will we intervene on your behalf should anything _legally_ untoward befall your person. At Our Lady of Endor, we take care of our own, but above all, everyone is expected to take care of themselves. Is that clear?"

"Crystal, Sister. Thank you."

Sister Crowley smiled. "Have a good night, girls." She bowed out of the room and closed the door with a quiet creak behind her.

There was a moment of awkward silence before Margaret turned back to her homework and feigned complete and uninterruptable absorption in _The Fall of the House of Usher_.

Morticia stood a moment longer, and then, taking the hint, hinged the handle of her trunk and folded her impossibly long, black stocking-clad legs beneath her to sit on the floor and begin unpacking the beast.

"I'm nothing like her, you know."

Margaret's head twisted around. She frowned. "Excuse me?"

"My cousin, Ophelia. I saw the look on your face when you said her name. I've sometimes had that look, too."

Margaret worried her lips together, skeptically studying the olive branch she had been extended.

"Ophelia's..." she started, then closed her mouth, unsure.

"Polarizing?" Morticia diplomatically supplied.

_A two-faced, manipulative tramp, _Margaret wanted to say, but instead said, "Yes."

Morticia smiled. It faded quickly, like a gesture she had only learned through repetition and practice, not necessarily insincere but only displayed by a conscious effort.

She said nothing, and Margaret felt that the ball had been subtly rolled to rest in her corner.

"So...where are you from?" she asked, somewhat lamely.

"Oh," Morticia shrugged demurely, "here and there, between Lisbon and Minsk. My family traveled a lot."

"Military?"

"Carnival. My mother was a snakecharmer and a fortuneteller, and my father was a geek. Papa died just this past August."

"Oh," said Margaret. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

"How did he die, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Choked on a bat's head. His favorite," Morticia sighed wistfully.

Margaret suppressed a grimace. "How awful!"

She meant the bat-eating itself, but Morticia didn't need to know that.

"Mm. Mama is heartbroken. She retired immediately, and we moved back to Papa's family home in Swamp Town. Aunt Hester - Ophelia's mother - suggested I be sent to school here with Ophelia, to take my mind off of things and give my mother time to grieve without having to worry about a teenage daughter getting underfoot."

"But isn't that a little...insensitive?" Margaret said before she could stop herself. "I mean, don't _you_ need time, too?"

Morticia shrugged and smiled again. She reminded Margaret of a silent film star, all black-and-white beauty, fluttering eyelashes and accented motions designed to convey what abbreviated intertitles could not.

"Oh, I'm all right. I miss him, but he went well, doing what he loved, and every time I hear the flap of wings or the screech of a bat in the night, I know he's looking up at me, keeping both eyes on me - one good, and one glass."

Margaret wisely decided against commenting on the creepiness of one's father unavoidably looking up one's skirt from the afterlife, and opted for a nod and what she hoped was a sympathetic expression.

Suddenly, Morticia shook her head. Her braid swung like a noose in a breeze.

"Oh, but listen to me, telling you my entire life story! What about you, Margaret? Are you from New York originally?"

Margaret was. The daughter of a self-made man and his social-climber wife, she'd been raised Episcopalian, but had been sent to the academy regardless, as bragging rights to her parents' little princess attending school with the heirs and heiresses to billion-dollar fortunes trumped their religious affiliation (which was really more of a social convention anyway, but that fact was never to be mentioned in polite conversation, which included tea with one's grandmother, no matter how badly one wished to cause her cardiac arrest, do calm down, Mother Womack, Margaret's only joking, more shortbread, anyone?).

She'd gotten used to Mass being on Friday nights fairly quickly, less used to it being Black (although she was by now old hat at turning a blind eye to Sister Lilith Caligula's theatrical nudity), and had come to feel only mildly uncomfortable in the school's largely self-governing and Darwinian atmosphere. She enjoyed her subjects, although she wasn't particularly good at any of them, and had carved a quiet niche for herself as That Girl Who Wears Pink, for which she was both feared and respected.

Morticia nodded, eyes wide, rapt, and Margaret found herself warming to the new girl's presence. Morticia hadn't been lying, either - calm, wry, polite: she really was nothing like her blonde floozy of a cousin. No doubt she would be popular as well, with her good looks and restrained charm. If Margaret could only keep Morticia on her side, she could prove to be a powerful ally.

Just because her family's money was new didn't mean they hadn't bred Margaret well.

* * *

><p><em>Six-hundred sixty-four, six-hundred sixty-five, six-hundred sixty-six...<em>

Morticia counted yaks, unable to sleep. Outside her window, the steady droning of bullfrogs and crickets was giving way to the irritating chirps of morning birds. In the bed on the opposite side of the room, Margaret was snoring softly, and had been since midnight. Morticia had heard of earlybirds before, but Margaret bordered on _ridiculous._ Still, she seemed a sweet enough girl, even if she did have questionable taste in fashion accessories. And decor. And food - Morticia had had to mask her disgust at Magaret's bedtime snack, which had looked like a small brick of woodchips wrapped in brightly colored foil. A granola bar, the packaging had read. Perhaps it was an American thing.

But Margaret had been generous enough to give Morticia the benefit of the doubt regarding her relation to Ophelia; the least Morticia could do in return was forgive the other girl a few harmless quirks.

Ophelia.

Morticia turned onto her side and opened her eyes to stare through the darkness at the wall. She hadn't seen her cousin in three years, not since Ophelia and Aunt Hester had summered in France and caravanned with the carnival between Versailles and Gargilesse-Dampierre. All Morticia could remember of the girl four months her senior was a spoiled, selfish fifteen-year-old whose favorite pastime was forcing Morticia to play lookout while she dallied in the costume truck with whichever roustabout had caught her fancy that night, and if Margaret's reaction to Ophelia's name had told Morticia anything, it was that Ophelia had changed little since.

Secretly, Morticia had been relieved when she'd learned that it was Margaret, and not Ophelia, with whom she would be sharing a room for the next few months. She was no longer so easily led, but the rest of the school year would be much less stressful without having to continually convince her cousin that such was true.

If it _was_ true, Morticia thought ruefully. Ophelia wasn't even in the room, and already she had managed to irritate Morticia to the point where sleep itself had now become a pipe dream.

Sighing, Morticia sat up in bed, donned her slippers and dressing gown, and padded over to the window. She peeled back one of the heavy velvet curtains, squinting in the creamy dawn light, sat on the sill and cranked the window open a few inches. The morning air was humid and cool, and carried the scent of dead leaves and...some kind of cigar?

The spicy smell disappeared just as quickly as she had caught it, and Morticia chalked it up to her mind playing tricks on her. She missed the incense of her mother's fortunetelling tent, that was all. Missed the pulpy must of the soft bark shavings that had lined the snakes' cages of chickenwire and worn-smooth wood.

Her hand dipped automatically into the right pocket of her dressing gown and reappeared with a half-smoked box of Nat Sherman Black & Golds. She extracted one long, slim cigarette and lit it with the heavy lighter that had been her father's. The heirloom's lizard-patterned leather always felt warm to the touch, and Morticia traced the pad of her thumb fondly over its cracks and bumps, remembering the first time she had been permitted to light one of Papa's Gauloises Brunes, seated at six on his bony lap.

She closed her eyes, letting the pang of nostalgia wash over her in a quick but heavy wave. Papa was dead. America was her home now. She would attend school, avoid Ophelia, and, if she watched often enough for bats, might even come out of the experience with an intact will to live.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Notes: Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter, and especially to those who reviewed. I really appreciate the encouragement!_

_I didn't translate the French in this chapter because I think in-line translations look clunky, and it's annoying to go back and forth if they're included at the very end of the chapter. But it's all really elementary stuff and easy to figure out the gist of what's being said._

* * *

><p>"Oh, good," said Margaret, studying Morticia's class schedule. "Our first three classes are the same. That will make things easier."<p>

The hallways were quiet and empty, Morticia's need for books from the library having necessitated their tardiness to first period, which was French. Morticia could already speak it, of course - truth be told, there were very few languages native to the European continent with which she was not at least passably adept - but she'd wanted an easy year, and most of the classes she'd signed up for were ones with which she was already familiar. Her instruction thus far had been happenstance, her knowledge and skills a collection of her travels and the myriad people of myriad backgrounds to whom she had been exposed, but aside from formal mathematics (which, thankfully, she was permitted to bypass in favor of a basic bookkeeping course), she felt she had a comfortable grasp on anything the American education system might see fit to throw her way.

And so, after a quick stop back at the dormitory to drop off the texts she wouldn't need until after lunch, she found herself being led by Margaret to room 101, where Sister Lilith La Voison was holding court - or at least, so it appeared to Morticia: the woman's hair was piled high and powdered _à la_ Marie Antoinette, and her habit had been sewn in the style of a sack-back gown.

Margaret took her seat, and Morticia was invited to take one of the free desks in the back - after she introduced herself to the class.

"_En français, naturellement,_" Sister La Voison said with an amiable smile.

Morticia surveyed her new classmates, whose expressions ran the gamut between expectantly curious and already bored. She straightened her posture and tried to think of them as carnival-goers, and she the bally, building the tip.

"_Bonjour, je m'appelle Morticia Frump. Je suis seize ans. Il y a quelques semaines, j'ai quitté l'Europe et déménagé à New York, et...maintenant, je suis ici._" She shrugged. "_Voilà._"

Sister La Voison nodded in approval. "_Merci. Classe, avez-vous des questions pour Morticia?_"

An olive-skinned boy with a pencil mustache raised his hand, and Morticia felt the heat rise in her cheeks. He was extremely handsome.

"_Oui?_" said Sister La Voison. "Gomez?"

"_La toilette?_" he asked, although he appeared to be addressing his desk, posing the query without lifting his eyes.

Sister La Voison rolled hers, and waved him away. He left the classroom without so much as a glance in Morticia's direction, and she lowered her gaze to hide her disappointment.

"_Quelqu'un d'autre?_"

Another hand flew up. This boy could have been the other one's slightly less attractive brother - the absence of a mustache made him appear a good deal younger, and his complexion was ruddier. In fact, he looked as if he was blushing furiously.

"_Si ce n'est pas indiscret..._" he began, and Morticia braced herself, "..._est-ce que tu as un petit ami?_"

Their classmates snickered, save Margaret, who pursed her lips, unimpressed.

Intrigued, Morticia studied him coolly for a few moments before she admitted, "_Non._"

The impertinent boy smiled. His neighbor scuffed his shoulder with a fist, and another howled a low wolf-whistle.

* * *

><p>Gomez breathed, deeply and slowly, and tried to get a grip on himself. He was bent double over one of the bathroom sinks, his fingers white-knuckled where he gripped the cool porcelain as the victim of a shipwreck clings to a piece of floating debris. That girl, oh, Lucifer's lungs, that <em>girl!<em>

Desperately, he twisted on the cold tap and vigorously splashed his face.

The effect was negligible.

What the devil was _wrong_ with him? No female had ever had this effect on him before. Not even when entertaining two at once had his heart beat half as hard. But seeing _her_ enter the room behind that peculiar little Margaret Womack...

Balthazar hadn't been exaggerating about her legs: they were so long that the red and gray hem of her plaid school skirt scarcely grazed the middle of her slim thighs, which were shrouded in stockings of black wool like the smoked glass stems of champagne flutes. A glossy black braid snaked down the scarlet back of her blazer like a scorpion's tail, and climbed up to a marble-white face so exquisitely chiseled, Gomez wouldn't have been surprised if an art thief had once tried to steal her. Even her name, Morticia, Morticia, _Morticia,_ like a moan with a whisper in the middle and a gasp at the end...

He dried his face and hands and leaned back against the wall. He lit a kretek, and alternately smoked with his left hand and chewed pensively on the thumbnail of his right.

Her beauty had struck him like a physical blow, but it hadn't been until she'd opened her decadently red mouth that she'd mesmerized him utterly. That low, smoky voice. The way her tongue seemed to gently cradle every softly rhotic R, and her lips press off every M in a kiss. It had taken every ounce of his self-restraint not to leap up from his chair and press kisses of his own to her gracefully folded fingers, as a knave supplicates himself before a queen. Her every word had woven a spell that tangled around and bit into his heart like barbed wire.

Devil take him, Gomez Addams was in love: abruptly, absurdly, _excruciatingly_ in love.

But what was he to do about it?

Suddenly, the door to the restroom swung open with a hideous shriek of neglected hinges that heralded Balthazar's appearance.

"Gomez?" he asked. "Are you all right? You've been gone nearly twenty minutes; Sister La Voison sent me to check on you."

"Yes, I'm fine," Gomez assured him. It sounded weak even to his own ears, and he cleared his throat and tossed the remnants of his kretek into one of the toilet bowls, where it fizzled out like an overtaxed nerve.

Balthazar looked understandably skeptical. "Are you sure? You don't look so well. Sort of clammy and pale."

Gomez managed a strained smirk. "Flattery will get you nowhere," he joked.

Balthazar smiled. "Perhaps not with you, but I think it might be working on Morticia."

Gomez felt as though someone had just kicked him in the stomach. "Oh?"

"_Oh,_" Balthazar echoed. "Not that I've had the chance to really talk to her yet, but we've been passing a note back and forth the whole period. Look." He dug a square of paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it for Gomez to read.

_**You're gorgeous**__,_ it began, in Balthazar's flowing Spencerian script.

_**Thank you**__,_ returned Morticia, in a charmingly rustic Copperplate that was equal parts traditional and uncontrived. _**And you are...?**_

_**Balthazar Addams. How do you like America so far?**_

_**It could be worse. But one can't have everything.**_

_**I think if a fellow had you, he wouldn't need anything else.**_

_**You're very sweet.**_

_**So I've been told.**_

_**And very presumptuous. You don't even know me.**_

Rereading the note over Gomez's shoulder, Balthazar was nearly vibrating with excitement and anticipation.

"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "What should I write next?"

Gomez shook his head and passed the paper back to his cousin. "It's your funeral, old man. Write your own eulogies."

"Oh, come on! Please? You're so much better at this than I am!"

A buzzing noise began to cloud Gomez's thoughts. "Look, Baz, I don't think..."

"What?"

Little red hornets of despair and unspeakable frustration swarmed at a fever pitch between his ears. Gomez closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

"Listen, I lied, I'm really _not_ feeling well." And indeed, the thought of playing Cyrano to Balthazar's Christian in this instance did make Gomez sick - a thorough and dizzying nausea. "Maybe something I ate at breakfast. Tell La Voison I've gone to the nurse."

Balthazar's brow furrowed in concern. "Of course," he said, and Gomez left before he could say anything more.

* * *

><p>After French, Margaret hastened Morticia out of the classroom, claiming they had to be quick: second period Accounting was all the way on the other side of the school.<p>

Balthazar, packing up both his things and the ill Gomez's, smiled and waved goodbye to her as she left.

"Ignore him," said Margaret, drawing her away by the elbow.

Morticia frowned, nonplussed. It wasn't in her nature to be rude without cause. "Whatever for? He's been very welcoming."

"Yes, and I'm sure he won't be the only one, but he's an Addams, and trust me, you want nothing to do with any of them."

"Why? What's wrong with them? And how many of them are there?" Now that she thought about it, the surname sounded vaguely familiar...

"Three, all cousins - Balthazar, Gomez, and Itt - and collectively they're the reason why there's always somebody crying in the girls' bathroom between classes." Margaret looked away and muttered, with grudging bitterness, "I speak from personal experience."

"Oh, you poor thing," Morticia murmured, her lips a condolent moue.

Margaret blew out a breath through her nose, and shook her head as if to shake off the hurt. "They're lotharios, all of them. It's genetic and untreatable. And besides-"

The door to the registration office opened in front of them, cutting Margaret off and causing her to startle back before injury could be added to insult.

Morticia, too, stopped short at the sight of who had nearly knocked them over. _Speak of the devil..._

"Excuse me, I..." Gomez Addams trailed off and seemed to pale when he met her eyes.

His own were heavy-lidded, wide and dark, so dark they were almost black. Morticia felt a strange fluttering sensation in her stomach, as though she were falling. She could even feel herself beginning to tip forward - into those eyes, into his arms - when she was suddenly snatched from her reverie by a shrill, sing-song voice.

"Gomez, my sweet chuck!"

A blur of blonde curls, daisies, and scarlet wool adhered itself to Gomez's side, rose up on its toes and pulled his head down for an ostentatiously open-mouthed kiss.

Whatever had been fluttering in Morticia's stomach was crushed to stillness by the sudden descent of her sinking heart.

Ophelia.

Of course he belonged to Ophelia.

Addams. Morticia could place the name now - a brief missive from Aunt Hester to Mama a little over a month ago, tucked with self-satisfied nonchalance somewhere between funerary and travel arrangements: _**It won't be formally announced until Ophelia's eighteenth birthday next June, but the Addamses have agreed to the match, and the boy himself is amenable.**_

Finally, they detached mouths, and Ophelia turned to Morticia, beaming.

"And I see you found my baby cousin even before I did!" she exclaimed, and Morticia froze as she was seized without warning in an overzealous embrace. "Oh, Tishie, it's been too long!" Ophelia squealed in her ear. "I was so sorry to hear about Uncle Thenardier! How's Aunt Esme? How are _you?_"

"Hello, Fifi." At a loss, Morticia responded in order, "It's been a long time, yes; thank you; she's...managing; and-"

"Late for class," Margaret interrupted, and Morticia shot her a grateful look.

"Hmm?" Ophelia pulled back. "Oh! Oh, yes yes yes, of course, we can't have you making a bad impression on your first day. What do you have next?"

"Accountancy."

"Oh, boo! I have Drama."

"You can say that again..." Margaret muttered under her breath.

Morticia bit down on the tip of her tongue to keep from laughing, and smiled at her cousin. "We'll catch up later, I promise."

"Absolutely! You must sit with us at lunch, at the fountain in the courtyard."

Morticia risked a glance at Gomez and felt her heart quicken, even though he himself seemed engrossed in something on the floor and to his right. "If Margaret may join us as well," she heard herself say.

Ophelia blinked owlishly, and seemed to register Margaret standing directly in front of her for the very first time. "O-oh. Sure. Of course."

"Oh, no," Margaret begged off. "Thank you, but I've got homework I need to finish up before fifth period."

"No, it's fine!" Ophelia insisted. "You're more than welcome."

"Really, I can't. Um. Maybe tomorrow."

"Okay, well." Ophelia shrugged, smiling, and began to lead her fiancé away by the arm. "Suit yourself. I'll see you later, Tishie!"

"_Oui, salut,_" Morticia absently returned.

Gomez's head twisted around, a queer expression on his handsome face, and for a fleeting moment, Morticia thought he intended to call out to her, to wrench his arm out of Ophelia's grasp and run back to her.

He didn't, of course.

_The boy himself is amenable..._

"Fifi?" Margaret asked as they once again hastened to class. "_Tishie?_"

"Oh, be quiet. _Maggie._"

"_Ugh, _don't you _dare!_"

Morticia smirked.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a testament to Gomez's _lack_ of skill in Clairvoyance and Divination (and possibly common sense) that he had not only failed to foresee Morticia's appearance in his thusly titled fourth period class, but also completely failed to consider the possibility that he could have any other classes with her at all. Had such occurred to him, he might have sweet-talked Sister Crowley into giving up Morticia's full schedule, or else somehow found the strength to see how the rest of the day played out, before heading directly not to the nurse's station, as he'd told Balthazar, but to the registration office to demand that he be dropped from French and transferred to another language class - _any_ other language class. (Now, he wasn't quite sure what he was going to _do _with Intermediate Hungarian, but that had been the least of his concerns at the time.)

As it was, he felt his body grow rigid with panic, for not only was Morticia Frump entering his current class, but Sister Lilith Edward Kelley was directing her to the empty space at Gomez's table, which up to this point he had been using as an occasional footrest.

He weighed his options. After his quick exit in French, the girl would probably take it personally if he ran. She wouldn't be wrong, but she would no doubt be offended, and the very last thing in the world he wanted to do was be the cause of her displeasure. Even though he should. Displease her, that is. It would make his life a great deal easier - infinitely more wretched, but easier - if she wanted nothing to do with him; and yet he could not bear the thought of deliberately inciting her hatred. But if he could not run, and he could not be rude...

He took too long to decide. She was standing next to him now, slipping gracefully sideways into the vacant chair, and he was stuck between a wall and a blasphemously beautiful face.

She was smiling at him slightly.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

Luckily, he'd learned in the hallway before second period that when she spoke English, the stupendous effect of her voice on his person was...not mild, but tolerable.

Just.

"Yes," he lied; then, as an afterthought, "Thank you."

"I don't believe we were ever formally introduced. I'm Morticia."

She extended one alabaster hand. Gomez stared at it for a moment before taking it. Her skin was cool and dry and soft.

"Gomez," he said.

Morticia's smile widened incrimentially. "_Enchanté._"

His reaction was instantaneous and inescapable: he lifted her hand to his lips, closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, inhaling sharply. He could smell the perfume with which she'd annointed her wrists, a drugging concoction of belladonna and bergamot, ladanum and leather, and he could all too easily picture her taking tea with one hand while wielding a bullwhip in the other. The scent was so unlike the waterlogged florals Ophelia favored; Ophelia who he could not hold without feeling positively _smothered_ by petals, who preferred daisy chains to metal ones, whose poison of choice was allergens in lieu of arsenic.

Ophelia his fiancée.

His idyllic image of Morticia shattered with the sudden crashing of reality through the stained glass window of his thoughts. Like a lucid dreamer jarred awake by the hallucination of a sudden fall, Gomez remembered himself - where he was, and to whom he was betrothed. Wresting hold of his control, he drew back, dropping Morticia's hand as though it had burned him.

"Charmed," he coughed out, eyes riveted to the tabletop. "Bewitched" was more like it. Bothered and bewildered. Glamoured and enamored. Captured, captivated, enthralled, beguiled...

A dead fetal pig in a shallow aluminum bowl invaded his line of sight and was set down on their work surface with a dull _clunk._

Oh, right. They were divining by entrails today.

* * *

><p>Morticia pared the piglet. Gomez had tried, at first, but the poor dear's hands trembled like the chains of Marley's ghost.<p>

"Neuroleptics," he'd sheepishly explained.

Morticia's own hands, enveloped in black latex gloves, moved as though they ought to have red hourglasses on their undersides. Her right hand was still warm from Gomez's lips. His show of gallantry had surprised her - Margaret's warning about Addams men aside, Morticia had been beginning to suspect Gomez didn't like her at all, what with his silence in the hallway and his almost terrified expression when Sister Kelley had indicated where she was to sit.

She wasn't sure _what_ to think of him now. He'd kissed her, sort of, but he'd looked almost pained when he'd done so, and he hadn't looked at her since - at least, not at her face. His heavy-lidded eyes followed her fingers as they guided the knife through the abdominal cavity of the fetus, watched as she disemboweled it with as much deftness and precision of which she was capable, and splayed its organs in the bowl for examination.

She frowned a little, eyes darting between the entrails and the diagram in her textbook, looking for anomalies in the dead tissue that could be read as omens. Morticia herself was a semi-experienced augur, but Mama's specialties - and thus the major focuses of her daughter's training - had been crystal balls and tarot cards. In fact it had been Papa who'd schooled her most often on animal anatomy, and that had been from a gastronomic viewpoint, which, unless Sister Kelley intended to append the lesson with a request for a very small portion of prosciutto, wasn't overly helpful.

Morticia glanced at Gomez, who was chewing on his bottom lip in a way that, had she been standing, would have made her knees go weak. His mouth, she remembered, felt just as soft as it looked, and she found herself wondering what it would taste like. He certainly smelled good enough to eat: sitting this close to him, every time he so much as turned his head she could detect faint whiffs of patchouli soap and pomade, and something else, something warm and spicy that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but that made her feel at once safe and aroused, as if she could melt against him and into him and be perfectly content for the rest of her life to simply be a part of his space.

"Can you see anything?" he asked.

A ramshackle mansion with a wrought iron fence, and two-point-five dark-haired, sleepy-eyed and mustachioed children.

Morticia blinked the fantasy away.

"Either our crops will wither in the fields and our livestock be defiled, or I'm going to fail this class."

Gomez laughed. It suited him, Morticia thought. His smile was hatter-mad, and it lit up his eyes with bright sparks of maniacal delight that one wouldn't expect from his grimly good-looking features.

"What about these marks here?" Gomez gestured to three vague splotches that mottled the liver.

Morticia removed her gloves, flipped a page in her textbook and traced a line down the paper with one red-lacquered nail as she skimmed through the definitions. Next to her, she heard Gomez swallow audibly.

"The death of a husband," she read aloud, "at the hands of his wife, because she wishes to marry another." A cold feeling settled over her like evening fog. She shook her head. "No, that can't be right..."

The idea was simply too gruesome. Ophelia was flighty, true, but she could _never..._

_Oh, yes,_ Morticia corrected herself, _yes, she could._ It might not be premeditated, she might not even _mean_ to do it, but given enough emotional frenzy, there was precious little Ophelia could not be provoked to do. It was said that the Frump sense of sanity was only a handful of generations removed from feral, and Ophelia was too much a flower child to ignore the influence of nature upon _her_ nature, even if the thought of Gomez being drowned in her flashfloods made Morticia want to weep.

It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair in the least.

Her hands itched for her own tarot cards, to do another reading on her own terms, and either confirm or deny what the piglet seemed to prophesy. If only Mama hadn't burned both their decks in a fit of grief...

Sister Kelley would undoubtedly have some, but their energy would be scattered, shuffled by too many students' hands, and Morticia had to be _certain._

"Gomez," she asked, "do you play cards?"

Gomez, whose eyes had grown understandably distant, didn't respond at first.

"Gomez," Morticia said again, and rested a hand upon his forearm.

He started at the touch, reflexively covering her hand with his own. His skin was hot and his palm was sweaty. For a moment, they both froze, petrified, awkward, yearning, then simultaneously withdrew, embarrassed, and looked away.

Each was glad the other was well-mannered enough to let the incident pass without mention.

Gomez cleared his throat. "Only occasionally," he replied. "My cousin Itt's the card shark of the family. I would kill to have his poker face."

"Oh."

"But if you're interested, our dorm holds a game every first Tuesday of the month. The stakes can climb fairly high if you value your dignity, but if you wish to attend, I can arrange for everyone to be on their best behavior."

Morticia smiled, something she found uncommonly easy to do when looking at him.

"Please," she said. "I would like that very much."

* * *

><p>So, Ophelia was going to kill him.<p>

And not, as others might have assumed, in a fit of jealousy over his unabashed flirtation with other girls.

In this case, one other girl.

And he really was doing his damnedest to feel abashed over it, but it was hard. She was too wonderful.

She was clever, quick-witted. She made him laugh, and while she might have appeared stone-faced to some, Gomez could read the minute shifts in her expression - a slight narrowing of her eyes, the subtle arch of a brow, a hairsbreadth parting of her lips - each of them a tiny tell, prismatic and shimmering, that spoke of a mind like a magpie's nest, a thing with thoughts collected like baubles, and memories compressed into jewels. If Ophelia was a fragile opal, a warped and milky freshwater pearl, then Morticia was a blood diamond mined to finance a war, an obsidian knife in the hands of a priest, poised over the heart of a human sacrifice.

Gomez wished that he could lay himself upon that bloody altar, but such was not to be. It was written in the viscera: like river weeds, Ophelia would tangle about his ankles and tug him down to rest in the same watery grave as her Shakespearean namesake.

The revelation had not surprised him. Frankly, it had brought him a measure of relief to know that his suffering would be cut mercifully short. He already expected that Ophelia would have affairs, if she wasn't having them already; that she would one day tire of him completely was a small and perfectly logical leap to take. The only question was, when? A year into their marriage? A decade? Perhaps she would prove Balthazar a prophet and become a true white widow, carting his casket home from their honeymoon alongside albino alligator luggage.

The only thing that pained Gomez about the prediction was that his time with Morticia would be equally finite. As long as he was married to Ophelia, he would at least have an excuse to see her, to glibly insist that she be invited over often under the pretense of fostering further closeness between his wife and her beloved "baby" cousin. The visits would be bittersweet, but he thought they might be enough to sustain him; that the nourishment to be gained from the sight and sound and scent of her might serve to temper the agony of his inability to feel her, to have her, and to call her his own.

Unless...

Unless he were to conduct an affair of his own. One final indulgence. After all, up until a few months ago, he'd always had it in his mind that when the time came for him to settle down with a wife, he would do so gladly, for she would be his one great love, his one great, enduring passion. The kind of woman who could stoke the infernal flames of his desire all the way from here to the gates of Hell and beyond, and he would know at once, as he knew right now, that he would never again long for another.

But then, supposing she someday returned his feelings, what of _her_ happiness, when finally he succumbed to his destiny? Could he leave her so heartbroken, to while away her remaining years in mourning? How could he love her and damn her to desolation both?

The answer was simple, and singular: he couldn't.

Oh, could he have only met her before this whole mess had begun! Had he but known the extent of the consequences, he would never have broken Flora and Fauna's hearts (or did they share a single organ between them?), nor his brother's (Gomez knew for a fact Fester had two, but only now understood that his brother's medical anomaly was designed so that one could be devoted to each twin). And then there was the matter of Balthazar, already smitten, a second Fester waiting in the wings for Gomez's selfishness to again take center stage...

He couldn't make that mistake again.

It should have pleased him, that the iniquity he had sown had reaped such a bounty as the girl of his dreams.

The only trouble was that she would have to remain so, for her own sake; for everyone's sake, it seemed, but his own.

* * *

><p>Gomez grew again quiet and reserved during the last fifteen minutes of class, but Morticia didn't let on that she knew just how personally meant for him the marks on the liver had been. Although she had the urge to somehow comfort and reassure him, there was nothing she could think of to say that would do either, and in any case she didn't know him well enough to judge whether he was the kind of person who would be resentful or appreciative of sympathy or distraction.<p>

Best to keep mum, then, and so their walk from class to lunch was a silent one. The backs of their hands brushed together once, and Morticia folded her arms across her middle to keep her fingers from following their instincts and twining with his. Both selected little in the dining hall, green apples and bottles of salted black tea. He held the door for her as they returned to the courtyard, where Ophelia and Balthazar were already at the fountain, in the company of a boy with long hair who was introduced to Morticia as the third Addams cousin, Itt.

"I see what you mean about his poker face," Morticia said to Gomez.

"Oh?" Balthazar piped up, glancing between them with a look of suspicion so desperately earnest it bordered on pleading. "Who else have you been telling her about, cousin?"

Gomez shrugged, his expression deadpan. "The usual suspects. Bartholomew, Throckmorton, Montrose...you know, all the most eligible bachelors Endor has to offer."

Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Very funny. But just for the record," he clarified to Morticia, "no one is more eligible than I."

He bowed and winked, and Morticia raised one wicked eyebrow.

"Oh," she quipped, "_that_ I believe," and Balthazar winced, cheeks reddening.

"_Cariña!_ You wound me. But you know what they say: you always hurt the one you love."

"If that's the case," Gomez chimed in, "I doubt you'll ever love so much as a fly. _Cariño._"

Surprise and a kind of betrayed hurt registered on Balthazar's features before he could camouflage them with a strained look that was more grimace than grin.

"Well," he said, "perhaps I've finally found my muse."

"Speaking of muses," Ophelia, oblivious, brightly interjected, "I'll be playing one, of a sort. We chose our spring play in Drama today, and Sister Strindberg picked me for Hermia in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. Isn't that wonderful?"

A round of lackluster congratulations ensued, and Morticia was made to promise she would run through Ophelia's lines with her on the nights when there were no official rehearsals.

"It's such a shame you have to room with that kooky Margaret Womack," Ophelia complained. "We could have had so much fun together. It would have been just like that summer in France!"

"It probably would have, yes," Morticia evenly agreed.

"Mdkahvn kasdgh hdfh hakjdh_,_" argued Itt.

"What do you mean, Margaret's not so bad? That peaches-and-cream complexion, those Alice bands, that pink lipstick..." Ophelia shivered. "Ooh, she gives me the willies!"

Morticia only shrugged. "She's a little different, but she seems to be a perfectly lovely person. I think her heart's in the right place."

"But isn't that dangerous?" Balthazar asked. "The right place is the first one most people would think to stab."

"And I suppose you've stabbed so many people in your day, Baz, that you would know?"

Balthazar flinched, clearly taken aback by the jab, and further by his cousin's sneering tone. Morticia, too, was taken, when she looked at Gomez and found herself rendered breathless by the unadulterated loathing ablaze in his dark eyes. If looks could kill, she thought, Balthazar would have been falling at her feet in more ways than one.

A shock of pleasure purled through her. She liked the idea.

Balthazar, as might be expected, did not.

"What is _wrong_ with you today?" he snapped.

The fire in Gomez's eyes scaled down to a smolder. He looked away, chagrined. "I told you, I'm not feeling well."

"Ohh!" Ophelia cooed, feeling his forehead with the back of her hand. "What's wrong with fair Gomez? You should have said something earlier! Do you need to go to the nurse?"

"He's been," said Balthazar, still scowling. "Apparently he's had a relapse."

The fire flared again. "I'm sorry, all right?" Gomez opened his mouth, teeth bared, as if to say something more, but he only hissed a heavy breath and shook his head in frustration. He ducked irritably away from Ophelia's hand, lobbed his uneaten apple into the nearest trash receptacle and stalked off.

"Gomez?" Ophelia called, following after him. "Gomez, duckling, wait!"

"I must apologize for my cousin," Balthazar muttered. "I really don't know what's gotten into him. He's usually very jovial."

"It's quite all right," Morticia promised, still looking in the direction in which Gomez had fled. "He probably has something weighing on his mind."

"Kklafsjdlfkajfg lkds askldjf laksd kasdjf?" suggested Itt.

"No, he was fine this morning," said Balthazar. "And then suddenly, halfway through French, he bolts for the bathroom and goes all Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde while he's in there."

"Pkladsja?"

Balthazar frowned. "I don't think so. I didn't _see_ any potion bottles lying around, at least. And anyway, you'd think he would have shared."

"Ikdsljafl."

Morticia blinked, a tentative notion breaking through her thoughts like moonlight emerging from cloud cover.

"He's been that way since French, you said?" she asked.

"Yes, since just after..." The same light dawned in Balthazar's eyes, but their innocence was quick to dispel it. "Oh, no, I'm sure it's not your fault. Gomez never avoids anyone he dislikes; he enjoys their company too much."

"Who _does_ he avoid, then?"

"Generally, only three things: Buick dealerships, the police, and-" Balthazar leaned in close to whisper conspiratorially in her ear, "-the fathers of past lovers."

Morticia raised an eyebrow. "Have there been many of those?"

"Fathers?" he asked. "Or lovers?"

"Both."

"Fewer of one than the other. They say discretion is the better part of valor; in Gomez's case, it's the better part of the word 'indiscretion.' At least, until your darling cousin came along."

"Is he very devoted to her?"

" 'Committed' would be a more appropriate term."

"Slkjfasldkjfaklsdfaldk awoig aklsdjf," supplied Itt.

"Indeed," Balthazar agreed, "straightjacket and all."

* * *

><p>Gomez tore through an empty hall, fists clenched, jaw locked, trying vainly to escape the thunderous buzzing behind his eyes.<p>

He couldn't do this. How on Earth was he going to do this? He'd tried, damn it all, he'd _tried,_ but jealousy, hot and thick and sour, had sucked down his intentions swift as quicksand. It had infuriated him to witness Balthazar's inane overtures and lukewarm flattery, when Morticia deserved so much more.

Baz should have fallen to his knees and flayed open his chest with his bare hands to offer her his heart to lunch on instead of her apple, should have dashed his own lunch to the ground and vowed to subsist solely on what scraps of affection she saw fit to bequeath him, for his every other appetite diminished in the presence of his hunger for her. It was what Gomez would have done - indeed, it was what he had had to fight _not_ to do, until the flies in his head had aggravated every ulcer on his soul for which sin was the only known salve; a sin that was beyond his willingness to commit.

An Addams caught in the throes of a moral crisis. Fester would laugh himself sick if ever he got wind of it.

Gomez heard the clicks of Ophelia's footsteps behind him like the bony stride of death itself, and without warning he turned and hied into an empty twilit classroom, picked up the desk nearest the door and hurled it with a snarl into its fellows across the room.

"Gomez, stop that, this instant!"

And in that instant, Gomez found himself mimicking the desk, judo-flipped heels over head to land flat on his back on the floor.

When at last the pain and shock receded, and he managed to regain his breath and blink the stars from his eyes, he found Ophelia standing over him, breathing hard and looking leery.

Gomez did the only thing he could think _to_ do, under the circumstances.

He laughed.

Hysterically. Nearly to the point of tears.

Ophelia stared down at him, head tilted, nonplussed.

"What in the world is the matter with you?" she demanded. "Why were you so unspeakably rude to poor Balthazar? And what Tishie must think of you! A fine spectacle to make of yourself in front of your future cousin-in-law on her first day!"

At the mention of Morticia, Gomez sobered at once. God, she _was_ a fool.

Ophelia shook her head, exhaled a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh, and offered a hand to help him up. He accepted it, and made as if to rise, but instead pulled her down on top of him.

"Gomez!" she squealed in protest. "Gomez Hidalgo Alonzo Francisco Franco Addams, you let me up this- mmf!"

It was more a gnashing of mouths than a kiss, brutal even by his standards, as he poured into it the bruising sum of his frustrations, his powerless rage, maddening desire, and total, insoluble despair.

Predictably, Ophelia didn't notice.

"...oh," she said when they broke, and then, shifting her hips against his, "_Oh._ Is _that_ what this is all about? You silly man, all you had to do was say so!" He released her and she moved to crouch over him on her hands and knees, wan mouth curled in a coquettish smile. "Let Mommy kiss it all better, hmm?"

All things considered, it was, he supposed, the least she could do. His general aversion to her aside, she did have certain charms, certain well-practiced talents he could appreciate, that before he had counted as one of the few boons their marriage would bring him, and that now in his hopelessness he had no qualms about cheapening, if they could alleviate the most superficial of his torments by even the smallest measure.

She kissed his cheek, his neck, trailed kisses down the front of his shirt as she undid the buttons of his trousers.

Gomez closed his eyes and surrendered to the images that had been ripening in his mind since the early afternoon. He tangled a hand in golden curls and willed them to feel like sleek rivers the color of mourning jet. He lengthened the fingers of the hand that encircled him, painted them bone-white and tipped them with talons stained scarlet from their greedy spearing of his heart. He turned the hot tongue that toyed with him and the thin lips that enshrouded him crimson as the color of life itself, and when he came he crushed daises in a trembling fist, and wished for a palm full of thorns.


	4. Chapter 4

_Author's Notes: Finally, no? I hope I still have some readers left, because I missed this. In fact I left it so long I forgot what, exactly, I'd been going to do with it, which is why some of you may notice that the beginning of this chapter was formerly the ending of the previous one - I ended up extending it to accommodate the story's new(ish) direction. I've also edited the other chapters, nothing so major as to cause insurmountable confusion from here on out, but little cosmetic changes that didn't sit right upon a reread. And so, without further ado..._

* * *

><p>Morticia closed the dormitory door behind her and leaned against it with a sigh.<p>

"What happened?" asked Margaret. She was seated cross-legged in the center of her bed and surrounded by a moat of textbooks and lecture notes.

"Nothing untoward," Morticia admitted, and more was the pity, for although she found that she shared both fifth and sixth period classes with Gomez as well, their seating arrangements left little room for anything beyond surreptitious stares and lovesick daydreams. And what was worse, he hadn't waited for her outside of either, after the bell had rung. Either her lunchtime suspicions had been erroneous, or Balthazar's claim that his cousin preferred to savor the company of those he found unsavory was.

But why did she care so much what he thought of her? He was handsome, yes - quite possibly the most exquisite-looking young man she'd ever seen - but she barely knew him, and he was earmarked to be Ophelia's husband besides. It didn't matter if he despised her or was clandestinely enamored of her, he was off-limits, forbidden, taboo, and to pursue him would be a gross breach of familial loyalty. It was simply out of the question, especially now, in this new country, in the wake of Papa's death and the midst of Aunt Hester's generosity, when being a Frump felt so much more important than it ever had before.

"How was lunch with _Fifi?_" asked Margaret, with a rolling of eyes.

"Bearable." Morticia shrugged. "Actually, she was only there for part of it, but Balthazar and Itt were diverting enough companions."

Margaret's smirk became more a pursing of her lips. "I'm sure they were. And I suppose they're the ones who showed you to fifth and sixth periods? I went to the fountain at the end of lunch, but I must have just missed you."

"Balthazar did, yes. He was very chivalrous."

"Hmph," snorted Margaret. "That's usually the way they operate. Don't let him pull the wool over your eyes. Just because he's the least guilty of the three doesn't mean he's innocent."

"I'll keep that in mind." Morticia paused. "Which one, would you say, is the most guilty?"

"It's a toss-up between Itt and Gomez, really."

Morticia proceeded delicately, pitching her voice with hesitation. "You said you speak from personal experience?"

Margaret opened her mouth, closed it, and shrugged uncomfortably.

"Itt..." she began. "We were partners for an Art History project last year. I liked him. A lot. And I thought he liked me, too. He would fold me flowers out of paper and leave them sitting on my desk. And then one day, we were supposed to meet in the library. I was running late, and when I got there...there they were: Itt and Ophelia, re-enacting Rodin's _Kiss._ I left and told him the next day that I'd gotten sick, and that was why I never showed. And then at lunch Ophelia had a paper daisy tucked behind her ear. I may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but I can put two and two together."

Morticia frowned. "Ophelia was with Itt before she was with Gomez?"

"Ophelia was with _everybody_ before she was with Gomez. Rumor has it she still is."

"And that doesn't bother him?"

Another shrug. "He'd be a colossal hypocrite if it did. Trust me, in that respect, they're perfect for each other."

"According to his cousins, he's faithful to her."

"Then he's an idiot. Or he's lying to them, too. There's no line he wouldn't cross. He drove his own brother away, seducing his girlfriends right out from under his nose. Gomez Addams comes from a long line of matadors on his mother's side and every girl is a bull to him, there only to make him look good until he gets bored of toying with her and finally gores her through the heart."

Once, as a child, Morticia had been in Pamplona for Sanfermines. She remembered being hoisted upon one of Papa's broad shoulders to see above the crowd, to watch through air thick with the smells of dust and smoke and human sweat as young men and women, kerchiefed in scarlet, tore through the city streets during the _encierro,_ both leading and being chased, the bravest among them pacing themselves but a breath away from the stampeding horns behind them. She remembered the boy who had fallen one step too short and been speared through the thigh before he was flung like a rag doll into the sea of humped and heaving backs weighing one ton apiece.

Most vividly, she remembered the red smear he'd left on the pavement in their wake.

"Sometimes the bull wins," she said.

Margaret considered this statistical inevitability. "Ophelia _is_ more or less the human incarnation of mad cow disease. That might give her a sporting chance."

Morticia smiled sadly. "It might."

"I know she's your cousin, but I wouldn't worry about her, if I were you. If there's anything Ophelia knows how to do, it's rebound."

Morticia shook her head. "I'm not worried." _About her._ "It's just...all so absurd. I move from Europe and the people here are even more Old World than I am."

"What do you mean?" Margaret asked around a yawn.

That's right - Gomez and Ophelia's engagement was still technically under wraps, and Margaret didn't appear to know that their courtship hadn't been arranged by the couple themselves.

"Oh, nothing." Morticia waved the question away. "Family politics. _C'est ennuyeux_."

She wasn't against arranged marriages as a rule - Papa and Mama had been chosen for each other by their own parents, and the match had proven to be a sound one, as emotionally successful as any made for love - but the thought of anyone attempting to arrange Ophelia into anything beyond a floral display seemed like a pipe dream at best, and at worst...

Morticia couldn't explain it, even to herself, why she so badly didn't want Gomez Addams to die. Death was a rite of passage, a reason to celebrate. It marked the learning of mysteries, liberation from the damp and foetid bonds of mortality. If suffering was the pathway to enlightenment, then death was enlightenment's doorway. She should have been thrilled for Gomez, she should have envied him, but, selfishly, all she could picture was a world without him in it. A world where she would be and his dark eyes and soft mouth and rich voice and feverish hands _wouldn't, _and the very idea left her breathless with grief.

Was this why they called it a "crush," this overwhelming weight on her heart, like the gargoyle Mama used to perch upon Morticia's chest at bedtime to encourage her nightmares? And to think, people acted as though these things were shallow schooltime infatuations. Did every attraction begin this way? Were crushes meant to suffocate one into love?

_Love?_

"I'm going for a walk," she heard herself say, and was glad when Margaret didn't offer to go with her.

The night air was cool, bordering on downright chilly, but she eschewed bringing her coat in favor of the clarity offered her by the cold.

It was what she would come learn was the school's quietest hour, with extracurriculars still in full swing and supper not yet on offer in the cafeteria, and she relished the solitude she found between the imposing stone buildings. She looked up at the stars, tiny diamonds scattered in a velvet dark void. The things they had seen. The people they had crossed.

If he couldn't be hers, that was one thing. If he couldn't be here at all, that was entirely another. Morticia didn't have to know him to know how much she would miss him; to be certain that, the moment his life ceased, what was left of hers would be nothing more than a hollow playact, a simulation of vitality no more profound than the convulsions of Giovanni Aldini's corpses.

Love, then.

Morticia Acherontia Frump was in love.

Twin tears rolled down her cheeks and dried there, crystallizing in the frigid air.

"Oh, Papa," she sighed into the night. "What am I to do?"

She waited, ears pricked, for the beating of bat wings, an echolocative screech of disapproval or consent, but it was a memory that supplied the sound: a song from an old film the whole troupe had gone to see at a midnight matinée in Lisbon. What a night that had been, with the ushers' eyes darting nervously around the freak-filled seats, remarking amongst themselves that the whole of Hades seemed to have turned out in attendance, drawn by Orfeu Negro's enchanted guitar.

She hummed a few bars, all hopeful lyrics and doomed delivery. Not all sad stories are tragedies. In sad stories, many bad things happen that may later be revealed to have been all for the best. Tragedy is knowing that all roads lead to heartbreak, and running down them with joy in your heart regardless.

"_Manhã, tao bonita manhã,_" she softly sang, "_Na vida uma nova cançao..._"

* * *

><p><em>I hate this,<em> Gomez brooded, seated with his back against one of the incinerator chimneystacks on the rooftop of Jack Parsons Hall, the mad sciences building, taking what comfort he could from the soot. _Odio esta maldita escuela...odio mi maldita vida..._

How was he ever going to endure this? He had known of her existence for only a handful of hours, and each one had been an exercise in torturous restraint. He could scarcely look at her for fear of being physically incapable of looking away. His every thought had been reduced to the maddeningly mellow tones of her voice and the sinuous lines of her shadow that threatened, with every breath he inhaled, to expand into fantasies of rich moans purring through bone white flesh, and an irrepressible compulsion to make them real.

_La quiero...la amo..._

Gomez closed his eyes and dug his fingernails into his palms and crushed the filtered end of his kretek between his teeth in a pained grimace.

"_Manhã, tao bonita manhã..._"

That voice, that inescapable voice, English, French, and now even Portuguese in his head, a succubus speaking in all tongues, mocking him with talk of mornings he had no will to see again, if it meant he would wake from the dream of her.

"_Na vida uma nova cançao..._"

In life there is a new song. Her song.

_Her song?_

Gomez's eyes shot open. At once he was on his feet at the rooftop's buttressed edge.

It _was_ her, strolling the path between mad and antisocial sciences buildings, a scant four storeys beneath him!

"_Sing,_" he whispered fiercely, all harrowing reserve forgotten, drowned out by his heart pounding an allegro in his chest. "O, sing again, dark angel!"

"_Cantando só teus olhos,_" his angel complied. "_teu riso e tuas maos, pois ha de haver um dia em que virás..._"

And come with eyes, smile and hands he did, climbing nimbly, lizard-like, down the ornately carved stone of the building's southern façade. He knew her song, its humid melody and bittersweet lyrics, he _knew_ it - but from where?

His mother's bossa nova records. It was the love theme of another pursuit, he realized, that of the Brazilian Black Orpheus and his Eurydice during Carnaval in Rio, Augustinho dos Santos dubbing Breno Mello. Death had hunted Eurydice, Mina had hounded Orfeu, and Orfeu and Eurydice had haunted each other in turn. But did Morticia see the parallels? Had she chosen the song by chance, or could she truly be singing for him?

Gomez leapt the last few yards to the ground, landing in a scranch of leaves between two overgrown lambkill shrubs, and somersaulted to his feet just as Morticia rounded the corner of Parsons, heading in the direction of Torquemada Court.

_Keep calling,_ he thought, as loudly as he could, _keep calling and I will come..._

* * *

><p>"<em>Das cordas do meu violao, que só teu amor procurou...<em>" Morticia paused under the spiny branches of a hemlock tree and leaned a shoulder against the frayed bark of its trunk. "_Vem uma voz falar dos beijos perdidos nos lábios te-_"

She froze, startled at the sudden sound of rapidly approaching footsteps behind her.

Something inside her warned her to remain still, and she heeded it.

Her pulse sped up as the footsteps neared and slowed, and she knew who it was without knowing how, as a shark knows a storm by an urge to dive deeper.

* * *

><p><em>Don't look back,<em> Gomez inwardly begged,_ please don't look back. Look back and I am damned. Look back and I will die._

Her silence was his permission, her unwavering back a gesture from the Fates themselves that for him a chance of salvation still existed - or else irony was a grim reaper indeed...

* * *

><p>A shiver crinkled through her when she felt the air behind her displace and heat with his presence, accompanied by a brief vision of blood-tipped horns and then, <em>Cloves,<em> she realized - that had been the warm and spicy something she couldn't place earlier, the gamey sweetness of cigarillos on his breath and his breath hot on the nape of her neck when he brushed her braid over her shoulder, but didn't otherwise touch her.

Instead she heard a rustle of fabric, and then the heavy, woolen warmth of his coat enveloped her, immersing her in that wonderful piquant smell, relaxing her utterly even as her awareness of her surroundings sharpened in focus. She thought his lips might have grazed the shell of her ear, just barely, just enough to prompt the gooseflesh always simmering beneath her skin to rise.

She gathered her voice and her courage, and asked him outright, "Why did you agree to marry Ophelia?"

Behind her, she heard him swallow dryly before he answered, "It's my punishment. For betraying my brother. For driving him away."

"Where is he now?"

"No one knows. It's been eight months since his last postcard to my parents. He was in Cuba at the time, but mentioned wanting to go by sea up to Norway, perhaps get in a little whaling. There was a hurricane not far off the coast. Mother's convinced he didn't make it. She said he ought to have just harpooned _me_ and been done with it. By and large, I agree with her."

"I don't."

"You are the most resplendent, radiant, ravishing creature I've ever laid eyes on. I want to burn your name into my bones."

Morticia closed her eyes as desire flowered in her belly and lit through her limbs. "Then do it."

He inhaled shakily in response, and she knew his body was all but thrumming with the tension strung across the few millimeters' space between them. This power was still new to her, a thing the depths of which she'd only just begun to toe when Papa had pulled the sea floor out from under her feet with his passing. She wanted to navigate it well.

"_Cara mia..._" he breathed.

She smiled. "I like that much more than _cariña._"

"Then _cara mia_ you shall always be!"

"Shall I? And who will make me so?"

"Not Balthazar," he said firmly.

"Not a boy who's affianced to my cousin, either."

A muted sob puffed against the side of her throat.

"I'll call it off!"

"How?"

Pained silence.

"Jilt her for me and my mother and I are turned out on the street. Jilt her for me and you may be, as well."

"We could manage. We could survive."

"Of that I have no doubt. But could you bear it, the loss of your clan? Your birthright?"

"For you, anything!"

"I'm flattered. But I couldn't." She heard his breath catch, felt his spirit stiffen, anguished. "I couldn't accept such a sacrifice from you, even if you gave it willingly. Your blood, yes; not your bloodline."

"Every last drop of it is yours," he vowed. "Every thread of sinew. Every organ. Every breath, thought, sound, second, aeon, until time itself decays! _Cara mia,_ tell me what I must do to win you!"

"Find a way," she commanded, reaching up to lightly scrape her nails down his cheek. "Without rendering yourself liable, make Ophelia leave you, _et je t'appartiens pour toujours_-" A gasp punctuated the sentence as he pulled her roughly back against him, his soft mouth and sharp teeth suddenly at her throat. Her fingers spasmed, clutching at his hair as lust tided inside her, overwhelmingly intense, a rip current of arousal and adoration that would have swept her off her feet completely had his arm not shackled her at the waist, holding her upright against the hard wall of his chest.

Panic bubbled briefly through her - it was too much, she had misjudged, underestimated his own power, how quickly she herself might sink - but both it and their embrace was cut short by a bark of laughter a short distance off in the direction from which they'd come. She flinched, and Gomez jerked away from her so quickly she nearly stumbled backward. He steadied her with a hand to the small of her back, almost innocent, just as Balthazar and Itt rounded the corner of Parsons Hall.

* * *

><p>"Morticia,<em> cariña!<em>" exclaimed Baz, already beaming. His smile faltered uncertainly upon taking note of the slightly taller, darker shadow behind her. "And Gomez. Should you really be up and about in your ailing condition?"

A vision of tearing his cousin's lips off his face flashed behind Gomez's eyes, but he stifled it, and managed a passably nonchalant shrug.

"Why submit to quarantine when I may be contagious?" he explained. "But not to worry, old man, I think it was an eight hour bug. And besides, I wanted to apologize to Miss Frump for my less than gallant behavior this afternoon. I'm afraid I didn't at all make a good first impression."

In the company of others now, she could face him safely, and she did, a gracious smile curving her crimson lips. "It's quite all right. After all, we're to be family."

Gomez's heart sang and sank at once at the two different possibilities her words implied. He forced a smile and bobbed his head in agreement. "Indeed. And with that, I think I'll absent myself before I do anything that might require your forgiveness again."

He didn't have it in him not to touch her one more time, given the opening, and so he took it, bowing over her hand to brush his lips chastely against the cool knuckle of her ring finger, knowing she would read the promise in the placement of the kiss.

Walking away from her was sheer agony, each step pulling tight the noose she'd looped around his heart. His lungs ached for a kretek but he licked his lips instead, drunk on the thought that cells from her body were now inside his, and folded his tongue back in his mouth in an attempt to recapture the taste of her skin, headier and more addictive than opium.

He made his way back to his dorm in a fog - or was it a steam? His body still burned from its contact with hers, and despite leaving her with his coat he didn't at all feel the cold. On autopilot he shed his school blazer and tossed it haphazardly on the dressing chair in the corner of his room, sat down on the edge of his bed and found himself trembling as if in the wake of some near-death experience.

Wasn't she, though? Embracing her, even if only for a few moments, had been the very apex of his life to date, the needle-sharp summit on a heart monitor between flatlines.

And he would flatline without her, of that he was certain. She'd insinuated within him a new basic physiological need: Morticia between food and air; between sleep and cyanide and nicotine, Morticia.

How in nine hells was he going to make Ophelia jilt him? It wasn't as though he had hitherto made any overtures of real romantic interest in her - and, truth be told, nor had she to him, until their parents had informed them of the betrothal. But since then, she had been putting real effort into her fawning, like the construction of a lattice to hold up later vines, and Gomez wasn't really sure how she honestly felt about him these days - whether she was still building, or if something had started to grow. If she had begun to genuinely care for him, indifferent as he was to her, what could he possibly do to dispel her feelings while maintaining his own veil of ingenuousness?

He'd never deliberately sought to make a woman despise him before, let alone perniciously, and Ophelia wasn't the type of girl to acknowledge anything subtler than a brick to the head.

A brick to the head, now _there_ was something he could have worked with - the most elegantly simple of solutions, and one that would have brought him sincere delight - but the death of her cousin hadn't been Morticia's bidding, and Gomez would not begin his bondage to her in disobedience of her first request.

He buried his face in his hands and rubbed at his temples, unable to think straight. The caustic thought that Fester, with his inhuman combination of absolute cunning and personal appeal, would have known what to do dripped mocking holes in Gomez's brain like battery acid. He so badly missed his elder brother...

The hollow thumps of footsteps climbing the stairwell interrupted his sullen cerebrations, followed by the familiar nasal creak of the opening door.

Balthazar regarded him with a mix of hesitancy and suspicion. He wasted no time mincing words - a suitable trait, thought Gomez contemptuously, for a boy who never minced people, either.

"What exactly is your game, cousin?"

"What game?" Gomez asked, voice lined with leaden fatigue.

"Are you going after Morticia?"

"Don't be absurd. Ophelia would murder me. And her."

"Since when has imminent death stopped you from pursuing anything?"

Gomez shot him a scowl. "Since eight months ago, or have you forgotten?"

Balthazar shrugged, but at least looked chagrined. "You've had other girls since then, even discounting Ophelia."

"None of whom I was in danger of being related to."

The younger Addams smiled. "Then you really think I have a chance with her?"

"Ophelia? Be my guest. Everyone else has." In fact, Gomez considered it something of a marvel that Balthazar and Ophelia had never taken an amatory shine to one another - they were both so uncommonly purblind.

"I meant Morticia and you know it."

Shaking his head, Gomez finally gave in and retrieved a fresh pack of Djarum Blacks from his bedside table. He lit one. The hot smoke filled his lungs like a change of slippers after a long day of loafing about. "Old man, if today has taught me anything at all, it's that a chance always exists."

Balthazar's eyes brightened, shining like new pennies in the orbital sockets of someone freshly dead. "She's beautiful, don't you think?"

She's exquisite, Gomez wanted to say. Unique in all the world. The Devil broke the mold and fashioned her by loving, prideful hand. And she was made for _me._

"She's lovely," was what he did say, and hated himself for being unable to wholly disagree, even to sour his cousin's opinion of her.

" 'Lovely?' An overcast day is lovely. Morticia is...is..."

"Blood on the snow beneath a midwinter moon."

"Yes! That's excellent, may I use it?"

"Shouldn't you woo her in your own words? What if I'm someday unavailable to assist you?"

Balthazar shrugged. "Write a phrase book before you go."

"_Que te den por culo,_ Baz."

"I'm only joking." He sat down on his own bed and twisted his fingers together nervously. "I'm taking her out. This weekend."

Gomez felt the blood drain from his face and kick him in the stomach. "You're..." He cleared his throat, choking back bile and what might have been the beginnings of tears. "You already asked her?"

Balthazar nodded. "Not fifteen minutes ago."

"And she said yes?"

"She did. I'm not sure where we'll be going, yet. Maybe the bogs. The mist there really sets the mood."

The boy's grin, Gomez mused, would be so much more attractive with a few broken teeth.

"Like the peat sets bodies," he concurred, envisioning one body in particular.

Nevermind his own game, what was _she_ playing at? Was this a test? Retribution? An impetus for him to hurry? Or was she, underneath all that serene aplomb, just as inconstant and fickle-hearted as her cousin?

If she was, did he care?

Yes, Gomez decided, he cared a great deal - but at the same time it didn't matter. The poison was in the wound, his soul already seething with the leaven of her raw perfection.

He had no choice. If a starting pistol she had fired, then Gomez would run with its bullet lodged in his heart.

And if he had to break Balthazar's to win (his heart, his teeth, his legs, their bond), then so be it.


End file.
